Attorney’s Conviction Shows Beijing’s Need for Social Control

Chinese rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang speaks at a court session in Beijing in this still image from a December 14, 2015 video.

Reuters

The conviction -- and disbarment -- of prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang sends a stern warning to other lawyers and to other citizens who speak out against Communist Party policy. Pu’s punishment should be viewed in the context of anxieties about rising labor unrest, vigorous social media, and the appeal of Western values. In the current political atmosphere, courage to speak out for change faces heightened threat, and the party-state’s treatment of Pu serves as a tough reminder that its authority cannot be challenged by critical speech.

Pu was convicted on Dec. 22 by the Second Intermediate People's Court of Beijing under vague laws that punish “inciting ethnic hatred” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” His punishment was based on seven messages he posted online criticizing the government’s ethnic policies and certain government officials for incompetence. The court imposed a three-year prison sentence but suspended it for the same period, during which he will be on probation. Any renewed political activism could lead to his imprisonment under the sentence. His disbarment is permanent, which not only ends his law practice but will limit his speech online or otherwise.

Silencing Pu without jailing him avoids some of the criticism, domestic and foreign, that would have followed a sentence of imprisonment like the one that was imposed on rights activist Liu Xiaobo. As the same time, it continues the crackdown on human rights lawyers that was intensified in July, and demonstrates that other activist lawyers risk permanent disbarment.

The state has taken other steps to limit lawyers’ activities. Article 309 of the Criminal Law was amended earlier this year with vague language that makes punishable “insulting, defaming or threatening” a judicial officer, and “engaging in other acts that seriously disrupt the order of the court.” Also, a controversial proposal has been made to rank lawyers so that “only those above a certain level would be allowed to take cases in high courts,”according to criticism from some lawyers and a prominent law professor.

The party is expanding the monitoring of people well beyond speech to gather more pervasive data about their lives. Last year, China’s State Council announced an ominous outline for the “Construction of a Social Credit System” to collect data on a person’s “personal, professional and financial” history that would include individuals’ online activities, hobbies, friends as well as financial information.

The current Five Year Plan calls for the creation of a “robust [national] socio-psychological service system.” That system could tap into credit data collected by China’s e-commerce companies, which are already working with China’s central bank to develop a credit-scoring system.

The motives behind the collection of data may not be entirely political. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has said that a system is needed in China to limit citizens’ actions because of the current crisis in social values. But it is too early to imagine how the system will operate by the 2020 target date for the completion of its establishment.

Critics view the plan as Orwellian given the access the state would gain to information about citizens’ lives and activities beyond their financial information. This will strike a chord in the West: A recent report states that the collection of private data from homes in Western countries has become “the single biggest issue in the field” of robotics.

In the meantime, the state’s determination to quell speech regarded as threatening and to make an example of such a high-profile person as Pu Zhiqiang clearly challenges others who might speak out.